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Squabble over how to spend Exxon's Valdez compensation

11 April 1992

By PRATAP CHATTERJEE

Enviromentalists and scientists are at loggerheads over how to spend
the $1 billion compensation Exxon has agreed to pay Alaska for the oil
spill from the Exxon Valdez that devastated Prince William Sound in 1989.
The scientists want more research into the long-term effects of the spill.
The environmentalists want to buy up nearby forest to save it from being
logged.

At the first public hearing on how the money should be spent, Glenn
Juday of the University of Alaska’s department of forestry proposed that
the state should create an endowment fund to provide enough money to continue
research on the effects of the spill and to coordinate work among the 30
government agencies that have a share in looking after Alaska’s coastline.
He said that as much as $200 million should be set aside for the fund.

Juday argued that some studies are being wound up because funding has
run out, even though the problems are expected to continue for the foreseeable
future. Oilburied in the sediments of Prince William Sound is periodically
flushed out, creating miniature spills. ‘These funds will give us a unique
opportunity to study the effects of the spill as well as other issues such
as the effect of the fisheries and increasing recreational use of Alaska’s
coastline,’ he says.

However, environmentalists say the money should be used to buy forests
near the sound, such as those owned by local logging corporations in the
Kenai Peninsula and the Kodiak Island area.

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David Janka, director of the Prince William Sound Conservation Alliance,
said he wants only a small amount of the money spent on research. He is
highly critical of the way the money available now is being spent. One-quarter
of it goes on administrative charges.

Janka says he does not expect much of Exxon’s $90 million initial payout
to be spent on forest land. Most of the money is already earmarked for reimbursing
the government for its studies. He also claims that some of the money will
go back to Exxon for the work it did in cleaning up the spill.

Alaska’s attorney general, Charles Cole, one of the people who will
finally decide what happens to the money, is against many of the research
proposals, whichhe says simply support bureaucrats in government agencies.
Officials from the National Parks Service are backing the plan to buy land,
but the logging lobby argues against it.

At the hearing, Robert Spies, chief scientist for the trustees of the
money, also promised that the results from studies on the effects of the
spill will be released later this year. These are being kept secret until
agreement is reached with individual litigants not to prosecute the state
on the basis of the findings.

Spies did, however, release an update on the effects of the spill. He
said the death rate of young sea otters in the oiled western part of Prince
William Sound is still twice as high as in the eastern part, which was not
affected by the spill. The population of murres, a type of guillemot, may
take a century to recover.